Fascinating NYT Mag piece on junk food

From practical experience, I can vouch for the addictive quality of these foods. The more crap I eat, the more I want. When I am eating healthy, think lean meats, fruits and vegetables plus some whole grains, it's not that I'm not eating the crap but that I don't WANT to eat the crap. It's getting from crap to not-crap and fighting the cravings that is hard. That's why it's so easy to fall off the healthy meal bandwagon. A few days of crap and your body, at least mine, just craves it.

 

I don't mean this to be a scold, but you're mistaken if you think a bagel for breakfast every day is a healthy option. If it's a whole wheat bagel, as in one truly made from 100% whole wheat flour and not just one that they've slapped "wheat bagel" on the bag, then you're mostly OK. It's still just carbs and you're better off w/ a breakfast high in lean protein, some fiber and some fruits in addition to the whole grain, but you're not doing much damage.

But it's almost certainly a bagel made from processed white flour, deceivingly labeled "enriched flour" on the label. They need to "enrich" it because they've stripped the whole grain and most of the goodness within, so they try to put some good stuff back. Alas it doesn't work that way. The best evidence is that our bodies digest foods made with white flour very quickly into sugar, which causes insulin to spike, which causes all sorts of bad things. A whole grain product is digested more slowly, in part because of the natural fiber, and thus avoids the spike in blood sugar. In much the same way, you're a million times better off eating an orange (digested slowly, thanks in part to the natural fiber) than drinking even freshly squeezed orange juice, which is digested much more like straight sugar.

My point is that for much of us, even when we try to do the right thing -- and a bagel is definitely better than a Rice Krispie treat as far as that goes -- we don't get things especially right because of a lack of information. That "healthy" option may not be nearly as healthy as you think.

In general I'd agree with Ragu; you're best off eating lean proteins and whole grains and fruits/vegetables and avoiding anything processed, which basically means avoiding things made with white flour.

That said, one of the highlights of my week is the poppy-seed bagel I enjoy every Sunday, toasted with butter. I basically eat "healthy" on Monday through Friday afternoon, then eat whatever I want over the weekends. It's worked for me for a decade now.

Maybe this post is better suited to another thread, but I couldn't avoid leaving unchallenged the "bagels are a healthy food option" position.

 

I understand that a bagel isn't the same as an apple. But the point was that it's healthier than a processed Rice Krispie Treat. It's a step.

And I also:

* Get up at 4 a.m. each day and run for an hour.
* Rarely eat red meat.
* Rarely eat any fast food at all.

But to be sure, I wasn't extolling the virtues of bagels so much as I was just illustrating how easy it was to buy something sugary and processed instead of something you have to "cook" yourself.

 

I've cleaned up the way I eat a lot in the last six months... I now basically eat no red meat, no regular soda, and cutting out fast food was a given...

It's interesting... When I was a kid, 30+ years ago, it was more expensive to go to McDonald's than it is today. I can run through the drive thru and get my kids each a double cheeseburger and fries for about $4 and they're as happy as can be...

I don't do it, or at least, I very rarely do it, but I certainly understand why people go that route. We have friends where both parents work and they have four kids and they probably go that route four nights a week.

 

If you want to make a case that our food is unhealthy, then I think it's a slam dunk.

But the "we should eat the way our ancestors did" always falls pretty flat for me. They weren't exactly known for their longevity.

 

That was a great read, thanks for the link, Steak.

The part about Frito-Lay's $40,000 mechanical mouth made me laugh out loud ... until I thought about how many of their snacks I've scarfed down over the years.

I'm overweight myself and this year, instead of trying an ultra-rigid diet that usually doesn't make it through January, I'm focusing on eliminating two things: soda and potatoes. Both of those took a beating in the NYT Magazine article.

Although I've had a few stray french fries, dumping the soda has been pretty easy. And without much of an increase in exercise (that usually gets better as the weather does), I've lost four pounds over the past two months.

It's a start.

 

The latter.

But the case for better eating, for me, is "we have a shit-ton of science now and we can tell you the best stuff to eat, and it's not modern junky food." Not "here's how cavemen ate."

 

Tough to say. How clean was the water and milk people drank? How many crops were infested with something bad? Nature, which can be pretty cool sometimes, can also be downright filthy and disease-ridden.

And, on another tangent, why isn't alcohol treated with the same disdain as processed foods? We're always hearing about people who gave up the processed foods or "eat healthy Monday through Friday" . . . but how about giving up the beer? Anyone do that? Why not?

 

I have finally found something in common w Dick Whitman. I get up at 4:15, walkt the dogs, then do a 3 mile jog, or go swimming.

But I don't think a single Rice Krispie Treat is worse than a bagel

A dry bagel:
350 calories
2.5 gram fat
3.2 gram fiber


A rice krispie treat
150 calories
3.3 gram fat
0.2 gram fiber


I love bagels, but I don't think 350 calories of starch is even a decent start to the day.

 

I think the answer to this is that alcohol's connection to obesity kind of gets lost in the shuffle because more attention is paid to its connection to more serious ills.

Plus, I think that most people wind down the alcohol use by the time their metabolism slows down. But they don't wind down the processed food use.